Prince of Fools (The Red Queen's War 1)

“Time to die, Broke-Oar.” Snorri bent low over the fallen giant, hands crimson.

A wet red splutter, then, “Burn the dead—”

Sven Broke-Oar had time for no more. Snorri crushed his skull with a sharp blow of the heavy buckler.

“Snorri.” I couldn’t manage above a whisper, but he looked up, the darkness fading from his eyes, leaving them clear and ice-blue.

“Jal!” Despite his wounds he was at my side in a moment, seizing the hood of my winter coat, deaf to my protests. For one moment I thought he was going to help me, but instead he dragged me across to lie beside Ein.

The Red Viking next to Ein looked dead enough, but Snorri took the knife from the man’s hand and cut his throat with it just to be sure. “Alive?” He turned to Ein and slapped him. Ein groaned and opened his eyes. “Good. What can you do for him, Jal?”

“Me?” I lifted an arm. I don’t know why—perhaps to ward off the suggestion—and found that I’d been stabbed, high in the bicep. “Hell!” Rolling over was an agony, but it let me confirm another flash of memory from the red haze of my battle—I’d been cut on the thigh too. “I’m worse than Ein is.” With the injuries I’d taken without knowing or remembering them, it was almost true. But Ein had a stab wound in his chest. One that bubbled and sucked with each breath out and in. The killing kind.

“He’s worse, Jal. And you can’t heal yourself. We know that.”

“I can’t heal anyone without half-dying myself. It’d kill me.” Though dying would at least stop each breath being a torture. My side had been filled with broken glass, I was sure of it.

“The magic is stronger here, Jal; you must feel it trying to break out? I can almost see it glowing in you.” An edge of pleading in his voice. Not for himself, never that, but for the last of his countrymen.

“Jesus! You people will be the death of me.” And I slapped my palm to Ein’s stab wound—harder than necessary.

In an instant my hand flared, too bright to look at, and every ache I had became an agony, my ribs something beyond comprehension. I snatched my hand back almost immediately, panting and cursing, blood and drool dripping from my mouth.

“Good. Now Tuttugu!” And I felt myself dragged. I watched through one eye as Ein struggled to sit up, poking at the unbroken but bloodstained skin where the knife had slid beneath his ribs.

Snorri set me beside Tuttugu and we met each other’s gaze, both of us too weak for talking. The Viking, who had been pale to start with, now lay as white as frost. Snorri pulled Tuttugu around, moving him without effort despite his girth. He tugged Tuttugu’s hand clear of the stomach wound and drew in an involuntary breath.

“It’s bad. You’ve got to heal this, Jal. The rest can wait, but this will sour. The guts are cut inside.”

“I can’t do it.” I’d more easily stab a knife through my hand or put a hot coal in my mouth. “You don’t understand . . .”

“He’ll die! I know Arne was too far gone, but this, this is a slow death—you can stop it.” Snorri kept talking. It washed over me. Tuttugu said nothing, only watched me as I watched him, both of us lying on the cold stone floor, too weak to move. I remembered him on the mountainside overlooking Trond, telling me he would run from every battle if only his legs were longer. A kindred soul, almost as deep in his fears as me, but he’d gone to war in the Black Fort even so.

“Shut up,” I told Snorri. And he did.

Ein came to join him, moving with an old man’s care.

“I can’t do it. I really can’t.” I pointed my gaze towards my free hand. The other still clutched my sword for some reason; it was probably glued on by all the gore. “I can’t do it. But no man should go to Valhalla with brothel rash.” Again, pointing with my gaze.

Finally Ein took the hint. I screwed both eyes shut, gritted my teeth, clenched what could be clenched, and he grabbed my forearm, setting my hand against the rip in Tuttugu’s belly.

It made healing Ein seem like a simple thing.

TWENTY-EIGHT

I woke before the heat of a fire. My side ached like a bastard, but the heat felt wonderful and if I didn’t move a single muscle it was almost comfortable.

Gradually other hurts made themselves known. A throbbing pain in my thigh, a stabbing pain in my arm, a generalized wretchedness from all the muscles I could name and many I couldn’t.

I opened an eye. “Where’s Snorri?”

They’d laid me out on one of the long tables at the end closest to the hearth. Ein and Tuttugu sat before the fire, Tuttugu binding a splint about his knee, Ein sharpening his axe. Both had cleaned and stitched their wounds, or had the other do it.